Investigation of the Precipitation Processes from Satellite Retrieved Cloud Microphysical Parameters

Precipitation is one of the important processes within the hydrological cycle. The evolution of precipitation intensity, location and duration will lead the various impacts when it falls on the high-risk potential region. The traditional study was based on the rain gauge and/or disdrometer observation, and ground-based radar to obtain the precipitation information over land and ocean. However, the cloud microphysical parameters and associated atmospheric thermodynamic state affects the cloud formation and leading to the precipitation afterward. The formation and evolution of both cloud and precipitation are lack of investigation from the space-borne platform in the past. In this project, we propose to use the continuous observation from state-of-the-art satellite in the geostationary orbit, Himawari-8 Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI), and those retrieved cloud microphysical parameters to investigate the cloud-precipitation processes. AHI has the full disk observation at the spatiotemporal resolutions of 2 km and 10 minutes. We expect to estimate, but not limited to, the cloud-top vertical velocity, entrainment rate, and will collocate with ground-based observation to identify the mechanism between precipitating and non-precipitating clouds, convective verses stratiform precipitation characteristics. In the third year of project, we also propose to use data assimilation technique to investigate the use of multi-channel brightness temperatures from AHI and cloud parameters in NWP model so that precipitation estimation will be evaluated and anticipate the improved forecast skills.